Hey, Brother, Can You Spare a Ruble? : But Bush Is Rightly Cautious About Soviet Aid Now

France, Italy and West Germany are all eager to begin channeling aid into the Soviet Union to help prop up President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s besieged and teetering economic reform program--and, more particularly, Gorbachev himself.

The United States urges caution, noting the admitted stumbling pace of efforts to replace the failed Soviet centralized planning system with essential free-market institutions.

Consensus or not--and right now not--the issue promises to consume a lot of discussion time at the seven-nation economic summit that opens in Houston today.

There is a good, hard-nosed, self-interested argument for the West to offer Moscow such things as managerial training and technical help to try to buttress an economy whose inability to provide basic goods and services is fanning ever greater discontent. The gist of that argument is that the West gains if a reform-minded Gorbachev, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, can hold on to power in the face of conservative resistance, and use that power to steer Soviet resources and energies toward more productive and humane ends.

Gorbachev and his advisers know what has to be done. Spending on the military and on heavy industry--the two are often closely related--must be severely cut, with investment directed toward achieving greater efficiencies and producing quality consumer goods. Decision-making must be decentralized, with demand rather than command dictating economic choices.

Achieving these things would produce not only a less threatening Soviet Union, but one that is far more ready to be integrated into the world economy and far more likely to expand human freedoms even as it enlarges economic opportunities.

The desirability of these objectives isn’t in dispute. There are, though, hard practical and political questions that have to be honestly faced. The main practical question is whether Moscow is yet ready to put Western help to good use; the answer for now, as even some of Gorbachev’s economic advisers agree, is that it’s not. The key political question is whether Western leaders, or at any rate a U.S. President, can responsibly propose putting scarce dollars into a country that still spends about $15 billion a year subsidizing such clients as Cuba and Syria, and that devotes one-fourth of its gross national product--about four times what the United States spends--to its military budget. The answer to that is apparent.

Some European leaders talk about spending billions to help Gorbachev out. Far better for now to think small, or at least smaller. Aid ought to be linked to the reallocation of Soviet resources, and to progress in developing a true market economy. That still leaves a lot of room for early help, including targeted technical advice, small-scale agricultural, industrial and environmental demonstration projects, food and other humanitarian aid programs.

The Europeans, of course, are free to do what they want individually; as Secretary of State James A. Baker III has made clear, Washington won’t object. The Europeans might pick up some political influence by jumping in with aid early, although by moving too fast they could also, of course, be inviting major disappointments.

But Washington has scant room for maneuvering, especially given our deficit, except to look at any Soviet aid program critically and cautiously. President Bush shouldn’t be embarrassed about expressing his well-founded doubts in Houston. It’s possible that our allies might even thank him someday for steering them away from costly mistakes.